KOLKATA | MUMBAI: Placements at the new Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) are headed for a bumpy ride. Behind the excitement of the big companies and bigger offers on campus lurk serious concerns: companies staying away, students in certain streams facing a struggle to get placed and the challenge of placing bigger batches at a time when recruiters are hiring in lower numbers.

Most of these IITs are apprehensive about how placements will pan out given that a number of recruiters - particularly among public sector undertakings (PSUs) - are staying away.

IOC, BPCL, HPCL, ONGC, Power Grid Corporation of India are among those that have hired in good numbers in the past, but have not sent out feelers this time round. New IITs are hoping they will reach out in January, but some placement sources admit it may not happen.

In February 2012, an interim order passed by the Madras High Court had restrained PSUs from recruiting in leading colleges including the IITs. The stay was later vacated by the court in September 2012 but the final order is pending. In such a situation, according to an IIT placement official, PSUs can come to campuses under the condition that the decision on whoever is hired will be subject to the High Court's final directive. A negative decision thus, could leave students hired but jobless.

"We haven't invited any PSUs and they haven't contacted us either. As of now, none of them are coming," says IIT Ropar training and placement officer Prabh Sharan Singh. Last year, PSUs had hired 24 to 25 students of IIT Ropar's 106 students. It's a similar situation at IIT Jodhpur and IIT Mandi as well. "IOC, BPCL and HPCL, which came last year, are not coming this year," says Arti Kashyap, faculty advisor at IIT Mandi.

If PSUs in most cases are a no-show, some of the big names which came last year have either not come to certain campuses this time or in certain cases, are not recruiting.

At IIT Hyderabad, Works Applications, which hired students for Rs 35 lakh for international placements last year, did not recruit any this time round. At IIT Ropar, Microsoft which offered four pre-placement offers last year has offered only one, and not made it to the final on-campus placements.

Google too could not come to IIT Ropar because of date issues. "Companies like Microsoft, HPCL and Flipkart, which came last year will not come this year, stating changes in hiring policy," says Gaurav Harit, acting placement chairperson, IIT Jodhpur.

In 2013, the institute placed only 73% of its BTech and 60% of its MTech batch. This year, 38 students have been recruited so far from among the 90 sitting for placements.The highest offer so far has been Rs 13 lakh from Morgan Stanley compared with Microsoft's Rs 16 lakh last year.

"Conditions are moderate and we expect placements to be similar to 2013 but not surpassing it," says an IIT Hyderabad placement team member. Last year, 40 companies came to hire 150 students. This year, while the number of students has risen to 200, the number of companies are expected to remain the same.

With bigger batches to place this time, the new IITs are reaching out to a larger number of companies so that placements are not hit. But hurdles remain. At IIT Jodhpur, authorities are worried because the manufacturing sector has been hit by the downturn.

Even IIT Mandi - among the few new IITs to achieve 100% placements last year - which got a headstart this year by opening a placement window in October, is concerned. "Companies which hire mechanical and electrical engineering students are likely to be cutting down on numbers because of the downturn," says Prabh Sharan Singh of IIT Ropar. Amidst all this, there is good news. IIT Rohtak has seen three top offers of $105,000 from US healthcare software company Epic Systems, compared with two last year. The average salary so far is Rs 11.13 lakh, up 21% from last year's Rs 9.17 lakh, and 18 students have bagged Rs 15 lakh-plus salaries. At IIT Mandi, Amazon has hired six students for Rs 20 lakh, compared with top offers of around Rs 17 lakh-Rs 18 lakh from Microsoft and Amazon last year.

At IIT Gandhinagar, average salary has grown by 8% to Rs 7.81 lakh while IIT Patna has seen the top salary soaring from Rs 16 lakh-plus last year to over Rs 18 lakh. At IIT Varanasi, Microsoft is making an international offer - the first this placement season - likely to be at around Rs 60 lakh.